A Response to Charles C. Bohl

Controversy

Abstract

We have in Charles Bohl’s response the construction of a straw man. He portrays my argument as thinly veiled apologism for “sprawl”—a charge also levied at a range of authors described as “marketists.” The latter term, used in a somewhat derogatory manner, reveals Bohl’s communitarian suspicion of the market and his commitment to wholesale regulation in order to protect “American values.” Bohl could have saved himself and this author some time and effort if he had made this position immediately apparent rather than to claim the intent to educate “marketist” opinion to the compatibility of New Urbanism with the free economy. I do not intend, in this short response, to defend the other authors whom Bohl puts in the “marketist” camp—they are more than capable of doing that for themselves. I shall focus instead on the deficiencies in Bohl’s response and his commitment to political communitarianism.